Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS)

National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education's picture
Submitted by National Center... on Oct 20, 2016 - 9:24pm CDT

Instrument
Authors: 
Orchard, C.A.
King, G.A.
Khalili, H.
Bezzina, M.B.
Overview: 

The AITCS is designed as a diagnostic instrument to evaluate the level of interprofessional collaboration among a variety of health care teams. Specifically, the tool measures partnership, cooperation, and coordination in a 37-item self-report instrument. The results are meant to provide insight into the strengths and weakness of interprofessional teams in a variety of settings. A validation study of 125 healthcare workers demonstrated good factor structure and high internal reliability.  A revised version (2015, see attached) contains fewer items (n=23) but measures the same three constructs.

Link to Resources
Descriptive Elements
Who is Being Assessed or Evaluated?: 
Teams
Instrument Type: 
Self-report (e.g., survey, questionnaire, self-rating)
Source of Data: 
Health care providers, staff
Notes for Data Sources: 

A variety of staff from orthopedic, general surgery, acute mental health, and palliative care teams in Canada were represented.

Instrument Content: 
Reported perceptions, experiences of working relationships, teamwork
Notes for Content: 

The tool measures three factors of interprofessional collaboration:

  1. Partnership
  2. Cooperation 
  3. Coordination
Instrument Length: 

37 items; between 10 and 15 minutes

Item Format: 
5-point likert-type scale ranging from always (5) to never (1)
Administration: 
Packets containing the survey, letter of information, and consent form were distributed. Surveys and consent forms were returned by mail.
Scoring: 
Items can be averaged overall or within factor. No specific scoring instructions are provided.
Language: 
English
Norms: 
None described.
Access: 
Open access (available on this website)
Notes on Access: 

Contact author to confirm permission to use.

Psychometric Elements: Evidence of Validity
Content: 
The content is based on literature review of collaboration, teamwork, cooperation, shared decision making, and partnership. Twenty-four interprofessional education experts reviewed the scale for clarity, comprehensiveness, and content validity. The experts strongly supported the item content.
Response Process: 
Respondents completing the survey commented that the survey requires a relatively short time commitment and relates to the actual work completed by the team.
Internal Structure: 
Factor analysis supported a three factor structure accounting for 61.0% of the total scale variance. Internal reliability was high for the overall measure (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.98) and the three factors (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.8-0.97).
Relation to Other Variables: 
None described.
Consequential: 
None described.
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